I’ve been doing some thinking about what I’d like to see happen in tech in 2010. A couple of these are pretty much guaranteed already. The others are, well … pure fantasy.
Apple tablet
The much-hyped, long-awaited Apple iSlate/iGuide/iPad. It’s almost certain Steve Jobs will announce this next Wednesday (27th Jan) at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. I wish I could be there to join in the whoops and cheers, but my invite seems to be lost in the post.
Apparently, this “latest creation” is Steve Jobs’ personal brainchild – something Apple have been trying to realise for nearly a decade. Legend has it the iPhone and iPod Touch are both spin-off devices from ongoing tablet development. It’s going to be pretty exciting to see what gets unveiled.
HP tablet
The Apple tablet will almost certainly be amazing, but as usual, it will be a premium-priced luxury item. I sometimes find it difficult to justify splashing out on luxury goods, so the next best thing for me could end up being the HP slate PC, which has already been revealed (by Steve Ballmer during his keynote at CES 2010).
While it won’t be up to the standard of Apple’s offering, it will be much more affordable (probably half the price), and is a nice looking piece of hardware. It could change the way a lot of people think about personal computing.
Apple Bluetooth monitor
I know I said I don’t do luxury goods, but add a swish bluetooth monitor to the product mix to hook up the new tablet with the existing Magic Mouse and wireless keyboard, and I might just be converted. Maybe.
iTunes Cloud
There are lots more rumours around that Apple is about to launch a cloud-based version of iTunes. Apple’s recent acquisition of Lala seems to hint that this could be on the cards.
Such a move would be more than welcome as many people (including myself) start to head for the cloud.
Google Docs mobile
Okay, we’re dabbling in the realm of fantasy now, but wouldn’t it be nice if Google would introduce a mobile version of Google Docs? By that I mean a mobile version that allows you to update documents as well as view them (as is currently supported).
Google have been sitting on this promise for years now. I’d love to see it happen this year, but it probably won’t.
That’s it. My list of tech toys to tremble over in ‘ten’. If you can think of any others, please add them to the comments.
